Looking back, it's become quite clear that the Miami Heat were never the same after Bam Adebayo's 83-point night. In the worst way possible, it was truly the turning point for the Heat's season.
It's one of those things that no one could've seen coming.
Throughout the second half of the season, the Heat consistently battled with their defensive identity. However, after that historic game, it's almost as if everything fell off the rails for the Heat. Their defense went from inconsistent to historically bad, and they were unable to recover.
Since that March 10 game to the end of the season, the Heat had the third-worst defensive rating in the league. The only two teams in the league with a worse defensive rating were the tanking Washington Wizards and Memphis Grizzlies.
The Heat evolved into a historically bad defensive team
If you were to extrapolate that defensive rating over the course of 82 games, the Heat would've had the worst d-rating in league history. As you would expect, that played a big factor in the Heat losing 10 of their last 16 games of the season.
What makes this all worse is the fact that the Heat were a top-5 defensive team for much of the season. In fact, through that March 10 game, Miami was still a top-5 defensive team. After that game, though, everything just fell apart for the team.
The Heat were so bad during those last 16 games of the season on defense that they fell from a top-5 defensive team to 14th overall on average for the year.
The oddest part of it all is that it's hard to pinpoint what exaclty changed for Miami.
They just fell off a cliff on that end of the floor. Could it be that their schedule toughed up, and that teams were playing for more than just a regular-season win at that point? Sure. But, even then, that's not an excuse for how far Miami fell in what felt like an instant.
The Heat's historic slide can't be explained
With how everything unraveled for the team, especially considering that this transpired in the midst of a stretch in which the Heat had won seven games in a row and 11 of their last 14 games, it's only natural to jump to the conclusion that there was a lot more going on behind the scenes than meets the eye.
At that point, it felt as if the Heat were beginning to play their best basketball of the season. Then, it was all gone, and Heat fans could only sit as their season began to slowly slip away.
There's no questionting it now, though.
If there was a bigger issue taking place behind the scenes, I'd imagine we'll hear more about it in the next few months. These things have a knack of coming out eventually.
But, no matter the case, it is quite unfortunate that on the Heat's brightest night of the season, it seemed as if it was just the beginning of the end.
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